Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Rhea was joined in love to Cronus and bore splendid children: Hestia, Demeter, gold-shod Hera, strong Hades pitiless in heart who dwells under the earth, the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker (Poseidon), and wise Zeus, father of gods and men, by whose thunder the wide earth is shaken. Great Cronus swallowed each child as it came forth from the womb to its mother’s knees. His intent was that no other of the proud sons of Heaven should hold the kingly office among the deathless gods. For he had learned from Earth and starry Heaven that he was destined to be overcome by his own son, strong though he was. Therefore he kept no blind outlook, but watched and swallowed down his children. Unceasing grief seized Rhea. When she was about to bear Zeus, she besought her own dear parents, Earth and starry Heaven, to devise some plan so that the birth of her dear child might be concealed, and that retribution might overtake great, crafty Cronus both for his own father and for the children he had swallowed. They readily heard their daughter and told her all that was destined concerning Cronus the king and his stout-hearted son. They sent her to Lyctus, to the rich land of Crete, when she was ready to bear great Zeus, the youngest of her children. Vast Earth received him from Rhea in wide Crete to nourish and bring up. Earth carried him swiftly through the black night to Lyctus first, took him in her arms, and hid him in a remote cave beneath the secret places of the holy earth on thick-wooded Mount Aegeum. But to the mightily ruling son of Heaven, the earlier king of the gods, she gave a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. He took it in his hands and thrust it down into his belly—wretch!—not knowing in his heart that in place of the stone his son was left behind, unconquered and untroubled, soon to overcome him by force and might, drive him from his honours, and reign over the deathless gods himself. **Cretan enrichment (Apollodorus):** Apollodorus tells that Rhea, enraged, went to Crete when big with Zeus and brought him forth in a cave of Dicte. She gave him to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrastia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to nurse. These nymphs fed the child on the milk of Amalthea, and the Curetes in arms guarded the babe in the cave, clashing their spears on their shields so that Cronus might not hear the child’s voice. Rhea wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Cronus as if it were the newborn. Ancient tradition wavers between Dicte and Ida as the rearing place; Apollodorus names Dicte but one nurse Ida. These details elaborate the same stone-substitution story without changing Hesiod’s core plot; they are retained here as enrichment of the Cretan setting rather than as a fully separate version line.